Summer camp focuses on fight against abortion

BRYAN —In a lofted lodge at Messiah’s Ranch, a Christian retreat a few miles outside town, about 20 teenagers sat cross-legged in a circle, talking about what it means to be a good listener.

It was a muggy, 95-degree day, and inside, the air-conditioning struggled to keep up as Laurie Stevens, a speech and debate coach, asked the group to whom they sometimes found it difficult to listen.

“Obama,” one girl said, deadpan, setting off a round of giggles.

Ms. Stevens waited for another response.

“My parents, when they tell me something I don’t want to do,” another girl offered.

Nodding, Ms. Stevens remained expectant.

“Pro-choice people,” a voice said finally, capturing the reason they were all there.

After a few more examples, Ms. Stevens summed up the discussion.

“When you don’t value what’s being said or the position that’s being held, it’s hard to listen,” she said.

The room around them has all the decorative touches expected of a rustic retreat; only, next to the wildlife trophies, there are laminated posters depicting fetal development at each month in the womb. A large folding table contained more poster boards, decorated with anti-abortion slogans and symbols, which sat alongside spiral notebooks, craft supplies and a scattering of soda and candy.

This is, after all, summer camp.

In its third year, Reveal summer camp is organized by Texas Right to Life, a statewide anti-abortion advocacy organization based in Houston. For $240, high school students can attend a two-week overnight camp that, along with providing plentiful icebreakers and s’mores, teaches them how to become activists. The site is on the outskirts of Bryan, an incubator of anti-abortion activism that has produced the 40 Days for Life prayer vigil campaign, now international, and Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood worker who has achieved rock-star status within the anti-abortion movement.

ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for
following agreed-upon rules of civility. Posts and
comments do not reflect the views of this site. Posts and comments are
automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some
comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules,
click the "Flag as offensive" link below the comment.

Comment viewing options

Sort Comments

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

James Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and chief author (1794): ""I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

If it is to be believed why the “Pilgrim’s” arrived in this land it should be noted that they came here to be free to believe as they desired not to force their beliefs on others.

Also it should be understood that in this “Free” land people have the right to believe as they wish and not be forced to live according to others ideas in which they have no interests.

It is well stated in our Constitution that there is to be a separation of church and state.
If it is to be expected that the state should have no direct control on religions then it should be understood that the church should have no direct control on the state.

All those believing in our Constitution should keep it in their minds as they attempt to force their religious ideas on others.

James Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and chief author (1794): ""I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

logicrules, our founding fathers wrote this into the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof; nor abridging freedom of speech,...."

Funny thing. There's nothing in that statement that states there is to be a "separation of church and state". That statement only occurs in a private letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association, which was seeking assurances that tax money would not be used to support one denominational church over another. The Danbury Baptists were concerned that the First Amendment would be interpreted as to deny them their right of freedom of religion. Jefferson understood this, and stated, at different times: "No power over the freedom of religion is delegated to the United States by the Constitution [Kentucky Resolution, 1798]; "In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government [2nd inaugural address, 1805]; "Our excellent Constitution has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary." [Letter to the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1808]; "I consider the government of the United States is interdicted [prohibited] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions or exercises [Letter to Samuel Millar, 1808]. Jefferson clearly believed that the government was to have no power to interfere with religious expressions, because he had observed the tendency of government to encroach on the free exercise of religion. Jefferson clearly believed that the Constitution only prohibited the establishment of a national, denominational church, like the Church of England, or the Church of Germany, or the Church of France.

Than means ONLY that the federal government is to take a "hands off" approach to religion. It is neither to favor nor prohibit any religion that does not abuse the rights of human beings--i.e., to the founding fathers, any religion that required human sacrifice as a part of every service was not only a false religion, it was anathema to all civilized persons. None of the denominations of Christianity were to be favored nor opposed by the federal government.

But that did not mean that Christians were prohibited from entering into public life (and since the vast majority of those who participated in the writing and ratification of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights were members of a Christian denomination), most believed that Christians should be elected to public office.

John Adams, our 2nd president, wrote that our constitution could only serve a religious and moral people, for it was inadequate for any other people, in his words)

John Jay, our first chief justice of the Supreme Court, and author of several of "The Federalist Papers", wrote, in a letter to Jedidiah Morse, in 1797: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is their duty--as well as privilege and interest--of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

then, by all means, don't get one. It's quite simple. I would rather read about young students going to a Habitat For Humanity camp helping build a house or something constructive. How about adopt a foster kid? Do some real good for real, living people. This camp sounds like a huge waste of time.

yhmil5
Your explanation may prove enlightening to some but I am quite sure my intent was obvious.
There is no reason why any particular religion should have the right to place their religious articles on public property nor demand that all should follow their beliefs.

If a woman desires to have an abortion or use contraceptives that is her choice. It may not adhere to another’s religious doctrines or even hers but no one has the right to force her to do as they see fit, and to alter laws to fit any religion is not only against our constitution but spiteful and bigoted.

these kids need to be doing something important like fishing, instead of being taught religious BS. There have been 5 conservative justices on the Supreme Court since the mid 1980's and they have heard many cases attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade. They have refused to do so and it is never going to happen. These kids would be better off in being taught how to fight idiotic tea bagger extremism and ignorance. Abortion is a medical procedure nothing more, nothing less. It is no one else's business and that decision should be the sole decision of the woman. Oh, by the way, Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and our 3rd President, was not a christian, in fact, he hated christianity. He believed in a god, but he was not a christian.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

What is it men cannot be made to believe!
-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith, August, 6, 1816

You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819

Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825

Say it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)

I am guessing by your reponses you missed a couple points in the letter.

1) In a lofted lodge at Messiah’s Ranch, a Christian retreat ....
2) In its third year, Reveal summer camp is organized by Texas Right to Life, a statewide anti-abortion advocacy organization based in Houston.

Isn't it ironic or maybe you liberal thinkers that believe in choice don't believe these kids should have a choice about attending this camp. Maybe you just believe they shouldn't be given a choice about standing up for an issue the believe in.

It seems to me that the only choice anyone should have is the one that agrees with your liberal nonsense..HYPOCRITES

The kids didn't choose this camp, their parents did. Two weeks of stifling heat, mosquitoes and indoctrination into the Big Brother world of the anti-abortion activists. Personally, I would have chosen band camp, or computer camp, or football camp.

Please show me in the article where it states the kids were forced by their parents to attend this camp. I understand it must be a new concept for you but their are kids out there that have morals believe in the Word of God and actually would want to attend this camp.

I'm certain they could not attend without parental permission. I have not met teenagers of the type you describe except when their parents are fervent believers who have indoctrinated their children into their beliefs. (That's not necessarily a bad thing; we all have beliefs we learned from our parents.) If you think the offspring of less-than-devout parents sat their parents down and said, "I don't care what you say, I'm going to Right to Life Camp this summer. Here's the form; sign it," you are sadly mistaken.

Geez Bubba, kids could not attend band camp without parental permission either, so what? I am curious why you hate anything religious. In your world parents teach, religious parents indoctrinate, right? How dare those parents instill their values into those kids. As for meeting kids like that, one of the most religious and ardent right to life people I know came from a pair of agnostics who could care less about the abortion debate.

All parents teach; fanatical ones teach fanatically. In general, good parents don't have to force their beliefs on their children; children absorb them like a sponge absorbs water. We all know people who completely reject their parents' beliefs and go the complete opposite way: devout children of atheists, Jewish children of Roman Catholics, liberal children of Tea Party parents. However, very few of them manifest this rejection in high school; it's a college-age event.

And for the record, I don't hate religion but I do hate coercive, my-way-is-the-only-way fanaticism, and there's way too much of that masquerading as faith. Check your Bible; Jesus opposed coercive sectarian domination so fiercely that it cost him his life. Somehow, that beautiful idea became corrupted into the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the Native Americans (North and South) as we3ll as similar atrocities perpetrated in the names of non-Christian faiths, all with the same attitude: convert or die. That's not God's way, it is man's.

My question and statement to you was simple. Believe it or not there are good moral adults and kids out there that would choose to go to a camp sponosored by...

1) In a lofted lodge at Messiah’s Ranch, a Christian retreat ....
2) In its third year, Reveal summer camp is organized by Texas Right to Life, a statewide anti-abortion advocacy organization based in Houston

All sorts of evil has been done in the name of religion. Yet, you, like so many others believe and state over and over that because these evils were done in the name of religion then ALL religion is bad. That's like saying everyone named bubba is a hillbilly and all hillbillys have no teeth. Is that fair or do you take offense to that?

There are kids that believe it or not choose to follow God because the were taught not forced by their parents. Their are kids that follow God because they see their parents heathen lifestyles and choose to not follow down that dead end road.

Why can you not accept and be happy that these kids have chosen to go down a path to help and enlighten people and better our society or would you rather their pants hang down and show their underwear do drugs, drink and talk about how the America owes them something?

Yo, I find your remarks hilariuos so far. I haven't finished reading all of it but do you need a manager or publisher?
I am not used to reading books on line but I think I will continue to read yours, I'm a slow reader but comprehend well.
Hopefully it will be as funny, and precise as well, as the start.

I didn't say all religions are bad; I never said all religion is bad. I did say that perversions of religion which are coercive and absolute in their insistence that theirs is the only way are not truly religious and bad.

I continue to believe that high school students could not and do not attend this camp without parental agreement and consent. The parents choose to let their children attend, whether it was their idea or the child's. And the alternative to teenagers receiving two weeks of training in "how to become activists" is not "their pants hang down and show their underwear do drugs, drink and talk about how the America owes them something." It's just kids who didn't spend two weeks at Right to Life camp. Your depiction of them is ridiculous.

We're not going to agree. I think boot camp programs, religious and otherwise, are often for indoctrination. You think they are important in steering teens on the right path. You can send your kids there; I wouldn't. Goodnight.

but I must confess that I almost feel guilty about having any type of intellectual debate with these evangelical nut jobs because ripping them to shreds is about as hard as hunting cows. I can argue actual history, science, and facts while all they can do is break the glass and start quoting scripture and threatening me with eternal damnation. No history, no science, no logic, and no actual facts whatsoever. All they can do is just quote words from the little magic book like a witch hurriedly in need of a spell. I was raised Southern Baptist and was dragged to church every Sunday but then I got an education and really began to look at Christianity and all other religions from an academic and historical standpoint and came to the conclusion that they are all ridiculous. There was probably a historical Jesus of Nazareth, and maybe even more than one, but what he or they did and said, who the hell knows. Yeshua or Jesus was a very common name at that time. Oh, and I am just sure that all of these kids just signed up for this crap. I wonder how many of their parents took vacations while their kids were down there or when in the process that these children were told what this so called "summer camp" was going to be about. Here is another one for you.

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Thomas Paine - Founding Father and Author of "The Age of Reason" among many other works. Paine was instrumental in helping America to recruit the Continental Army, in writing and disseminating political propaganda to use against the British, and in securing monetary and military aid from the French which enabled America to win the revolutionary war. We would not have won without the massive amount of help that we received from the French. Oh, and obviously Paine, like Jefferson, was not a christian. In fact, he hated christianity with a passion that exceeded even that of President Jefferson. He also came out for the abolition of slavery in 1775 about 85 years before the Civil War started. So he was even "Country before Country wasn't cool" as the old Country music song goes.

I am not a historian and I find your involvement in Jefferson’s letters and remarks enlightening. All of this can be verified with even the smallest amount of research; less can be said of the gospels; an issue on which Jefferson wrote:

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

In other words ‘don’t believe everything you read’ but better still have the ability to separate fact from fiction and opinion from law.

No one prefers a dictatorship so why are so many willing to accept one in the guise of religion, throwing man back into a Spanish inquisition?

Religious zealots (bigots) will find no wisdom in Jefferson’s words; it is their desire to run the world according to their ignorance.